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101 Letters were written.
Notification of Births.
In addition to the home visits, the work under this heading has been greatly
augmented by the opening of the Maternity Centre in Kingsland Road on
May 11th.
Here we are able to send the mothers when need arises for daily dinners
provided by the Women's League of Service.
The cases chosen to attend are those mothers whose babies do not make good
progress, or where the mother is known to be delicate, and also necessitous cases.
*
Ante-natal cases are fed if necessary for six months before the birth of the
child, and post-natal for nine months if the child is still breast fed.
Results have been highly satisfactory and encouraging.
On Tuesday afternoons the babies whose mothers attend this centre are
weighed, and advice is given to all mothers who stay for the consultation. 21
ante-natal cases and 45 post-natal cases have attended from Haggerston, and have
generally shewn great appreciation.
It has made all the difference to an overworked or delicate mother to come to
a daintily laid and well cooked dinner, and to be able to sit down comfortably in
cheerful company to enjoy it.
The dinner hour is fixed at 2 p.m., so that father will have returned to work,
the older children to school, and the baby and children under school age can be
brought to be cared for in the creche during the dinner hour.
The only difficulty has been to keep the numbers down to the level of
accommodation, and it has required no little ingenuity on the part of the helpers
to fit in the numbers at the dining tables, and also the babies and toddlers in the
creche.
At the Haggerston Baths the Thursday attendances have shown no falling off
in numbers, although many have been transferred to the Maternity Centre.